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Havas launches influencer division within Socialyse

Havas is launching a dedicated influencer division within Socialyse, the ad network's social media division.

It is the latest move by an ad agency network to harness influencer marketing with a dedicated team.

A newly-created team, headed up by Jenna Walker, content and creative director of Socialyse, and overseen by Jess Rowntree, director of Socialyse, includes two new hires: Nik Speller, who co-founded influencer marketing agency Three Letters, and Zoe Crook, from The War Agency.

The six-strong team, led by Speller, will focus on two key strands: influencer marketing for brands, and growing business leaders into influencers.

Effective immediately, the new Socialyse Influence team will work across all Havas clients, and have been tasked with ensuring influencer campaigns are highly targeted, brand aligned and accurately measured.

Influencer marketing is expected to be worth more than $24bn (£18.6bn) globally by 2019, and $8bn in EMEA, according to a 2015 study by start-up Susurrus.

This has prompted M&C Saatchi’s talent management shop Merline to launch a new division specialising in social influencers, while earlier this month Dentsu Aegis Network made an investment in influencer talent agency Gleam Futures.

However, several social media personalities have fallen foul of UK advertising rules by failing to properly identify themselves as ads, prompting some to question whether there is an influencer marketing "bubble".

Paul Frampton, chief executive of Havas Media Group, said: "This investment in a stand-alone influencer offering reflects the growing need for a dedicated team of experts working on influencer campaigns.

"The industry is proving slow to react to this rapidly emerging trend but at Havas we have identified a need not only for campaign management but for strong brand safety awareness and measurement `effectiveness."